Butterball Turkey Abuse Farm Raided

Last week a disturbing video of workers viciously abusing turkeys at a Butterball facility was put online by the group Mercy for Animals, and today officials in North Carolina did something about it, raiding the Hoke County turkey semen collection facility to further investigate charges of "acts of violence and severe neglect."

And things do look grim down there. It's hard to watch the below undercover video of lovely large birds being thrown, bashed, kicked, and living in their own waste with open sores and not get upset—even if you enjoy eating them. Yes, at this point most of us have seen footage of badly kept, industrially farmed animals, but that doesn't make the image of a turkey, unable to stand and covered in flies, slowly dying on the floor of a factory farm any less harrowing. This video may be NSFW, depending on your boss's opinion of turkey snuff porn:

The video footage was shot between November and December of this year by an undercover investigator at a Butterball turkey semen collection facility in Shannon, North Carolina. Butterball, the largest turkey producer in the country which "accounts for 20 percent of total turkey production," has not yet responded to our request for comment. For more of Mercy For Animal's photos and coverage of Butterball's alleged abuse of turkeys, click here.

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